Economic boomtown’s a social powderkeg

Despite the economic boom in this Sun Belt city, experts say the Georgia capital has many strains in the social fabric, some linked to the history of the South.

“There is a great deal of poverty in the Atlanta area, particularly in the inner city but also in neighboring suburban areas,” says Robert Agnew, professor of sociology at Emory University here. “The gap between rich and poor is increasing.”

Traditionally, many of those poor are black. But growing numbers of working class whites also live below the poverty line, providing fertile ground forwhite supremacist groups. “Race is a big issue,” Agnew says. “There is some racial tension here and you see it in the city.”

At Stone Mountain, a massive granite outcropping on the outskirts of Atlanta, crowds gather nightly in the summer for a sophisticated laser light and music display that culminates in a sentimental tribute to the South. Carved into the side of the rock is a sculpture featuring the image of Jefferson Davis, `President’ of the pro-slavery confederacy during the US civil war, and when the spectacle ends, blacks jeer and whites cheer.Blacks have their own events. Each spring, African-American college students descend on the city for `Freaknik’, a week-long street party punctuated by heavy drinking, violence and sexual exhibitionism.

Signs of Atlanta’s economic rise are everywhere: top-drawer international firms such as Coca-Cola and CNN have headquarters here, housing construction is at an all-time high, Hartsfield Airport is the busiest in the world: 73.5 million passengers used thefacility in 1998.

According to the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, median household incomes in Atlanta have risen from $ 35,000 dollars in 1990 to more than $ 47,000 today.But despite the boom, the city has failed to develop its infrastructure to keep up with the expanding population and has failed to hang on to well-paid jobs for workers, exacerbating general social tensions, the experts say.